


once upon a dream

by moogle62



Category: Cinders (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 11:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2810996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moogle62/pseuds/moogle62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cinders can see her life taking many paths but never quite the ones she wants to tread.</p>
            </blockquote>





	once upon a dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eida/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, Eida! I love the Cinders world and its inhabitants and getting to write for it was such a cool Yuletide treat so thank you for such a lovely prompt! I hope this fic does it some justice for you <3

When Cinders was little, her father would read her a story every night before bed. Her favourites, and his favourites, were the stories of the fair folk in their lakeside homes. The fair folk told promises and lies and Cinders, curled safe and warm under her blankets, would try to guess which words they spoke were true.

“Careful, little one,” her father always said, “for the fair folk never know just one truth.”

Now, when Cinders is older and reads stories for herself, she feels the keen meaning of her father’s words in more ways than she could have expected.

// 

Cinders’ first task, once she’s turned down her bed and made herself presentable, is to serve the breakfast.

It’s strange, she thinks, each morning, how the invisible connections that link a family beyond blood and physical similarities can be found in the smallest of ways. All the women in the house take eggs for breakfast if they can but where Sophia prefers hers scrambled and served on lightly coloured toast, Gloria takes hers poached and served with nothing but a garnish of butter. Carmosa, the matriarch, takes hers hard boiled.

Cinders has always liked eggs. One morning, while carrying plates up the stairs from the kitchen and being careful not to trip on the hem of her dress, she realizes she’s never had them for breakfast.

She pauses in the doorway to the dining room. Carmosa is buried in papers at the head of the table while Sophia and Glora, looking barely awake, avoid each other’s gazes from opposite sides of the long table. For a moment, Cinders imagines what it would be like to join them.

Cinders might smile and sit down, choosing the seat next to Sophia. While they’d both see the seating as a tactic, Gloria would rather be faced and Sophia would rather be in company.

“Good morning,” she’d say.

Gloria might say, “Good morning,” or Sophia might nod in her direction and she doubts if Carmosa would even notice she was there, not this early, not this deep in her finance line of thought, but whatever happened it would be a start. She could make the gesture and it could take them anywhere.

Instead, Cinders sets the breakfast plates down on the table without a word and no one even gives her a second glance.

Maybe tomorrow.

//

Carmosa sends Cinders to town more now than when Cinders was little. Cinders likes to think she’s earned some trust over the years, proved herself capable. She is capable, she knows. Of a lot of things.

She knows what Carmosa thinks she is doing on the days she lingers in the marketplace, running her hands over the silks at the fabric merchant’s stall or daydreaming about the fruit she might buy with a little expendable income. Carmosa is convinced she has taken Tobias as a lover, or a sweetheart at the very least, that she spends her late afternoons whispering sweet nothings or pressed feverishly against him against his bolted shop door.

This is not what Cinders has been doing with her time -- she has precious little free time and even less desire to spend what she has on a boy she has known from childhood and has less inclination to know now -- but sometimes she thinks about Carmosa’s conviction. Not seriously, just in idle moments like darning torn skirts or walking slowly home in the sun, but she thinks of Tobias’s freckles and the way they held hands when they paddled in the river as children, Tobias rolling his trousers up past his bony knees while Cinders held up her skirts with her free hand. They went home with damp clothes and the promise that they’d be friends forever but then Carmosa moved in with Cinders and her father and Tobias grew up to value commerce over love. It’s sad, Cinders knows, but she has as much interest now in the prince she’s never met as she does in furthering her relationship with her childhood friend.

Some days at the market the Captain patrols the square. Perrault, Cinders does think about. He has a stern face but careful hands, mindful whenever he handles goods from the stalls. Cinders thinks about what it would be like to feel those hands on the soft skin of her waist. He would have callouses from sword training and they would match her own, from housework. His voice would be rough but gentle and he would say her name low in his throat, like he’d never held a woman as close to him before.

But these are only daydreams. What Cinders does, every day, is turn her back on the marketplace and walk the winding path home. She has more need of self-surety now than of a partner, after all.

//

Cinders always leaves a gift for the fair folk by the lake. She’s never seen any evidence that they’re there but whenever she goes back, be it days or only hours later, her carefully-placed parcels are gone from the base of the weary willow tree. The wind rushes through the tree branches like the voices in her dreams, thin whispers of laughter in the grotto.

Carmosa is the most level-headed person Cinders knows and she frowns upon talk of the fair folk in her house. Cinders asked why, just once, and Carmosa had snapped, “Ask your dear mother.”

Cinders hears the call of the willow tree at night though the lakeside grotto is too far for the sound to carry to her window. She wonders whether her mother heard the same thing, whether she followed its call to the banks of the lake and listened to the shallow lapping water. Madame Ghede won’t tell her and the sisters don’t know and Cinders doesn’t trust that the fair folk would give her the truth. She may have set aside her fairytales but that doesn’t stop her knowing their words by heart, the cadence of the old tales and their careful, coded, warnings.

//

The royal ball is mere nights away. The house whirls with dress-fittings and visits from merchants selling jewellery Cinders knows Carmosa has had to work to afford. They all look resplendent dressed for society, lighter almost, like the prospect of elevation has lifted something else within them.

All the women in the house, Cinders knows, have a hidden cache of hope - for themselves, for their family, for their futures. It’s as if the ball has given them permission to find this again, to step into places from which they had long since turned away. Carmosa lets both her daughters choose a trinket from the jewellery merchant’s tray. Gloria even fastens the clasp of Sophia’s necklace for her without Sophia asking and Sophia doesn’t push her away.

They all sweep out of the door, breezing by in a fugue of sweet-smelling perfumes. Their heeled shoes against the tiled hall floor sound almost like music, a domestic kind of ball. Cinders presses her compliments on them all, tries to make her words sound as genuine as her sentiment. Before the carriage pulls away, she sees Carmosa smile. The simple sincerity of it, the unguarded moment, tugs at her heart.

Cinders is still standing in the open doorway when the wind picks up. It carries the whisper of the grotto with it, the faint sense of ethereality, watchers in the darkness. The trees lining their drive bow and curtsey, deferential in wake of the breeze.

Cinders looks back over her shoulder at the lamplit empty house. The wind catches at her hair as she turns, like an enticement, like an invitation.

Far away, the palace glitters with the lights for the ball like answers in the dark. There are no answers for Cinders there, nor behind her in her well-trod, well-known rooms. But out there? What is there for Cinders away from the safety of her familiar home walls, away from the intricacies of societal behaviour?

The winds blows stronger, colder. Cinders shivers.

_Careful, little one, for the fair folk never know just one truth._

Maybe Cinders doesn’t want just one truth. Maybe her path has more curves than horizon-seeking straights, more twists and turns than one story can provide her. She takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with the crisp autumn air, letting its certainty wrap around her like a well-loved story, familiar words on a page.

If she is sure of anything, she is sure of her choices.

The evening smells of autumn, and promises, and Cinders, suddenly light-hearted herself, steps out to meet it.

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, I am happy to warn for anything I might have missed - just let me know <3


End file.
